My Office Space: August 2014 (Major ‘BadAss’ Goals Achieved)!

Posted in My Gear

WOW! It was the “hardware jukebox”-show the past two weeks. Update 2Aug14: I finally figured out what it is I need and want hardware wise for the next few months to come. Read more about the due diligence here.

Handheld devices

Just 1, no tablets for me. Got something better for that. Read on …

Apple iPad iPhone 4s 32GB

Indeed, no iPhone 5 due to accessories ‘recycling’ of my ex-iPad 3. Specfically bought for occasional national phone calls, WhatsApp, and to make videofy.me ‘on the road’ videos. As of 1st of August it’s wrapped into an Otterbox Defender rugged case.

iPhone Apple Accessories

2x USB charging cables
7000mAh USB battery
USB car adapter
Solar Charger
Stylus Pen
VGA cable

All portable equipment and these accessoires are carried with in a Dell Nylon Carrybay.

Computers

Let’s start with what all the fuzz was about at the end of July and early August 2014.

Medion Akoya E1318T Mini “BlogTop”

Instead of laptop, as I blog mostly on this netbook.

Basic Specifications

AMD A4-1200 1GHZ Dual-Core (not a speed-freak)
AMD 8180 GPU (play Full HD)
4GB RAM memory
500GB 5400rpm IBM harddisk
802.11n WiFi WLAN
10.1″ 1366×768 LCD with capacitive TouchScreen

But here’s the cool part. And why I prefer this netbook above the Acer Aspire Switch 10:

HDMI + VGA, 2x USB2, 1x USB3, SD card, LAN / UTP

And it also comes with Windows 7.1 and Office 2013 of course. Weight: 1.35KG. Batter life 5.5 hours.

Great device for getting more work done quickly than on my fore mentioned iPhone, but also not powerful enough to do certain tasks. Read more here about the due diligence.

Other Generic Accessories

All accessoiries below fit into my very sturdy Nylon Dell Laptop carry bag.

1GB ‘lego’ Persistent Linux keychain USB | Running Linux Crunchbang (for emergency Internet access)
2GB Troubleshoot USB | For Recovery & Repair purposes (incl. FFUB + many other neat tools)
32GB Ultimate Boot USB | 16GB of mobscene’s v5.0 bootmedia + extra’s
500GB 2.5″ Toshiba USB3 harddisk | For personal backups
Travel Adapters | for obvious reasons
USB hub + cardreader (AIO) |
USB led light | to read in the dark (and still see my keyboard )
USB retractable convertors | From A to B, mini, micro, etc.
USB to UTP

Home Office: HP XW8600 “The Beast” Workstation

According to HP:

The HP xw8600 Workstation delivers the extreme performance that allows you to tackle the most demanding challenge. Building upon and advancing.

To be honest? This rig wasn’t on my wishlist by far! But I was browsing Tweakers.net … and it came onto my radar and years ago I always dreamed about the raw power of a Xeon. Bought it for €225 and didn’t expect much of it.

Except … the noise level; as this is a workstation (not the default consumer crap). But to my great surprise, it’s remarkably quiet. And by quiet, I mean, it makes as much noise as a laptop! Let’s have a look at the specifications.

‘Basic’ specifications

Quad Xeon 2.83GHz (CPU model: E5440) | CPU benchmark: 4055
Integrated LSI SAS 1068E controller w/RAID0, 1, 1E/10E
8GB of ECC DDR2 RAM
DVD+/-RW with lightscribe

Next month will be upgrading to Dual Xeon 7403 passmark points. I was thinking about going to install Hackintosh OSX 10.9 Mavericks. But I actually like how it runs at the Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate edition. And can actually virtualize OSX with VMware Player!

Video Performance & MultiMedia Experience

The sole reason I bought this beast is for Adobe After Effects rendering and webdevelopment.

19″ 1280×1024 (4:3) Dual Screen | why not 16:9 or 16:10? This works more efficient for me!
Sapphire ATI HD RadeOn HD4870 2GB @ 150W | 1450 passmark points; good enough for now.

‘Offline’ Storage

In order of importance

Crucial SX100 256GB SATA3 SSD | Primary drive
OCZ Vertex 2 60GB SATA2 SSD| Swap file … yeah crazy, but had it laying around
Toshiba 500GB USB3 connected to PCI-E USB3 card| backup

Online Storage and Backup

10GB Dropbox … mostly used to sync with iPhone recordings.
120GB Google Drive Storage
2TB of Ingreso Cloud backup

Peripherals

Aten CS22U Dual KVM USB switch
Logitech C210 webcam | for skype calls and it’s mic
Macally ICEkey Keyboard
Microsoft Lasermouse 6000 v1.0 (with wire )
HP Laserjet Pro P1102w

Creativity MultiMedia Studio

Update 4Aug14: Yes! After a few years of absence, I’m rebuilding my creativity studio!

Synthesizers

Korg M50 61 keys | yes! Been on my visionboard for 4 years, and finally able to get it 1st of week of August (my own birthday gift)

Much more than just another workstation. The M50 should be called an “inspiration station”. It will take you creativity from spark to sparkable! ~ Korg

Others

Sennheiser HD218i | Supra-Aural on-ear stereo headset (for both PC, Mac and Apple iDevices
Sony MHC-C50 stereo set with decent 80W speakers.

‘decent’ … not quite. But good enough for the occasional jamming.

Network Infrastructure

Divided into two sub sections

Home Office

The Dutch Ziggo as a provider with the “All-in-1 Plus”-package. Meaning for the Internet: 90Mbit down and 9Mbit up. Ziggo provided the Cisco EPC3925 EuroDocsis 3.0 with WiFi for ground floor coverage.
Used to have a Netgear router. It’s not that I didn’t like it; I HATED it. Internet dropped often, strange internet speed limits. So instead bought an ultra cheap & fast router from my favorite brand: TL-WR841N 300Mbit.
Yes! That’s more like it! And I know it’s stable; TP-link always is. With or without custom firmwares; the make the best network equipment on the planet! Anyone that says / writes different has no clue what they are talking about